


Red Yellow Gold

by intentioncraft



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Deancest December, M/M, Time Travel, Young Dean/Older Dean, selfcest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 22:18:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2789705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intentioncraft/pseuds/intentioncraft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The young man sits near the back along the wall opposite the counter in a booth built for four, facing the door but hunched over a half-drunk beer and chewing the cushion of his bottom lip in deep thought.</p>
<p>He’s waiting for someone, but Dean knows someone’s not coming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Yellow Gold

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Deancest December 2014](http://deancestdecember.tumblr.com/). Prompts: nostalgia, dinner date. I guess it's a prequel to [this one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1319392). Crossposted to [tumblr](http://intentioncrafts.tumblr.com/post/105444533428/preseries-dean-s9-dean-pg-1-3k-ao3-for).

The bar hums warmly around him, lights low to obscure the faces of people halfway across the room, nondescript, anonymous, hazy like a dream. Glasses full and empty and clinking like bells. The sound of cheering hisses from the grainy TV set atop a small ledge over the bar. A grudging solitude, the sense that someone could spent the whole evening alone and unbothered, appreciating and resenting it at the same time.

The young man sits near the back along the wall opposite the counter in a booth built for four, facing the door but hunched over a half-drunk beer and chewing the cushion of his bottom lip in deep thought.

He’s waiting for someone, but Dean knows someone’s not coming.

Dean takes the long way around, head down but feet deft as he avoids stepping on the toes of every bar patron who seems to suddenly want to get in his way. Someone says “Can I get you something, pal?” but he ignores it and pardons himself past a smiling woman who looks like she just got off a fancier date than this.

He makes his way to the young man’s table, nearly tip-toeing in behind him and then sliding into the seat opposite him, smooth as glass.

The young man’s eyes focus, every line in his body pulled taut in a split-second from a lifetime of training. Dean watches the man's left hand clench into a fist, his other drift below the table to, undoubtedly, pull a gun out of his waistband and point it at Dean’s legs.

"Hey, now, don't pani—,"

“Tell me who you are,” Dean – twenty-five years old and lonely as hell – growls in a voice pitched lower than it actually was at that age. It _seemed_ effective back then.

“I’m you, genius,” Dean barks back in his naturally gruffer voice, then hears a click of a safety and forgoes the Star Wars reference on his tongue, “Whoa, hey, just calm down for a second.”

The other Dean's mouth pulls back into a grim smile, “Oh, I’m calm. And in another four seconds you’re going to be pretty _calm_ , too.”

He could say something stupid and cliché, like, You’d only be hurting yourself, but he’d kind of forgotten what an upstart he was all those years ago. He'd rather get out of this with both kneecaps intact, “Shooting me in the shin won’t do much.”

“Well, it’ll hurt like hell and then you’ll beg me to put a bullet in your brain.”

“Ohh, trust me, sweetheart,” _Sweetheart_ , God that’s weird, “I’ve had worse,” he leans back to appear less of a threat.

It works; Dean follows him forward slightly, “So, what is this? What are you? Some kind of shifter?”

“You ever hear of a shifter ageing someone a decade?”

Dean shrugs, “First time for everything.”

He laughs harshly, “Then how about this for a first: I’m you. From the future,” He spreads his hands in a ta-da gesture and waits for a smart-ass reply.

Dean doesn’t disappoint. His eyes light up with skeptic's curiousity but his mouth twists up in a sharp smile, “That so? There hover cars in the future? Robot slaves cooking up a revolution?"

“What — dude, it’s nine years. Not _fifty_.”

Dean scoffs, “Coulda fooled me.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Dean bristles.

“Nothing,” Dean bats his eyelashes innocently, smirk mirrored on his older double when he realizes that he’s being fucked with by himself.

“So,” his younger starts. He still hasn’t clicked the safety back on but seems willing to indulge Dean a bit longer, given that they’re in a public place and even the dumbest shifter wouldn’t try anything in a crowded bar, “you're the ghost of Christmases yet to come. What does the future have in store for me if I keep up what I’m doing?”

It’s such a stupid question, but one that Dean would ask, of course, always so practical. But it’s not one that Dean is here to answer because it’s supposed to be fun and he doesn’t want to ruin his night with the truth, so he changes the subject, “Dude, ancient time-travelling magical staff. What would you do?”

“Oh, that’s easy. 2002. That lifeguard up in Miami with that wicked snake tattoo around his bice—wait a minute,” Dean’s eyes go wide, “If you’re me, then we — uh — we kind of think the same, don’t we?”

Dean shrugs a vague _yes_.

“But you just asked me what _I_ would do if I could time-travel anywhere — Miami, lifeguard, water bed — and you’re —?” he points his finger accusingly, his other hand suddenly flat on the table and all ideas about shooting his future self forgotten, “Oh, man, you are _depraved_.”

Dean raises both eyebrows and tilts his head suggestively, “Hey, pal, now you’re thinking about it, too.”

Pink blooms in his younger double’s cheeks and he pulls his mug towards himself and buries the lower half of his face in it. When he resurfaces with a heaving breath, he says, “Well, sorry to disappoint you, old man. But you picked a bad time. I'm waiting for someone."

"I know. And I also know he's not coming."

"How would you—," Dean fires, and then sits back as the confidence slips for a moment as he visibly deflates at the news, “’Course you know,” he mutters.

"He'll phone tomorrow morning to apologize. Big test coming up that he needs to ace. Can’t remember which subject,” Dean explains, hoping he can pre-emptively push back the tide of bitterness that swept him under a spell for weeks after.

Dean chuckles, "What a nerd. _Does_ he ace it?"

“Yeah," He doesn’t actually know. Sam never told him, Dean never asked.

Dean snickers, but then smiles into his drink and falls into silent contemplation. He’s still hurt, although it might not be obvious to any random stranger who passes a glance his way, but Dean knows the set of his own shoulders, the subtle way he curls his lip to force a smile and the hand he drags across his cheek to keep himself grounded.

“Look,” he leans forward with his elbows on the table. His foot nudges the young man’s right ankle as he threads their legs together beneath the table. It’s a cheap, cheesy move, but one that works. It’s always worked. He knows what the rules for this vacation say it’s a one-time, no consequences deal so he’s not even certain anything he says will have an impact, whether this is just a little sidecar universe that will cease to exist once Dean heads back to his time. But he can’t let Dean take the heat for this one. He can’t let him become embittered by this one thing, “Don’t hold it against him. I know what you’re feeling. You’re angry. And you think it’s your fault, that you were stupid enough to think you could fix it. But it’s none of those things, got it?

“You’re going to tell me it all turns out okay?”

Dean bites his lip, considers the lie, considers what he has to go back to later, and the words slip out of him, “It…it doesn’t.”

The other Dean seems to sigh inwardly, his shoulders cave, he sniffs, blinks and looks away. It’s small, how he sinks under the weight of all the things that are going to happen to him. There’s a lump in Dean’s throat, behind it some kind of reassurance that shit happens, things fall apart until they’re dust, but he can’t get himself to say the words, put a patch over this new, premature wound.

But, finally, the younger Dean finds his balance, shoulders set and face like stone, and says “Okay,” he pushes his drink away, scoots out of the booth, and then says again with a fresh, brittle, brilliant smile, the _everything-is-fine_ smile, "You win, George Jetson. Let's do this."

 


End file.
